Your Ecommerce Agency Is Probably Not The Problem

Most UK manufacturers and retailers who think they need a new ecommerce agency actually need something else entirely. A clearer brief. A governance structure that holds partners to account. A client-side capability that can direct external delivery properly. The agency is rarely the root cause. Here is what usually is.

<p>The conversation has a familiar shape. The MD is frustrated. The digital programme is not delivering what was promised. The agency relationship feels expensive and opaque. Someone is going to be called in for a difficult conversation, and it is going to be the agency.</p>

<p>Before that conversation happens, one question is worth asking honestly: what exactly is the agency being held accountable for?</p>

<p>In most cases, the answer is uncomfortable. There is no written brief that defines the commercial outcomes the agency is supposed to produce. There is no governance structure that reviews progress against those outcomes on a defined cadence. There is no internal person with the seniority and clarity to direct the agency's work and hold it to account. There are reports, produced by the agency, measuring the metrics the agency chooses to highlight. And there is a growing sense that something is not working - without a clear shared understanding of what "working" was supposed to look like.</p>

<p>In this situation, the agency is not underperforming. The relationship is underperforming. And the relationship is a shared responsibility.</p>

<blockquote><p><strong>The agency is not underperforming. The relationship is underperforming.</strong></p></blockquote>

<p>This is not a defence of agencies that genuinely fall short. Some do. Poor work exists and it deserves to be named and addressed. But in our experience working with UK manufacturers and retailers, the majority of ecommerce agency frustrations trace back to the same set of client-side failures rather than agency failures. Recognising them is the first step to fixing the relationship - or making a genuinely informed decision about whether to change it.</p>

<h2>The brief problem</h2>

<p>"We want more sales" is not a brief. It is a wish.</p>

<p>Most ecommerce agency relationships begin with an incomplete commercial brief. The agency is told what the client wants - traffic, conversions, a new website, a B2B trade portal - but not why it matters commercially, what success looks like in measurable terms, or what constraints the agency needs to work within.</p>

<p>The agency, being a commercial business that wants to win and retain the client, accepts the brief. They scope the work they can deliver. They propose what they know how to build. And they commit to metrics they can control and report - traffic growth, click-through rates, page speed scores, number of features delivered.</p>

<p>None of those metrics are the same as commercial outcomes. And when the MD reviews the quarterly report twelve months later and asks why the investment is not showing up in the revenue line, the agency is presenting data that genuinely supports their case while the client's genuine commercial need has gone unmet. Both parties are telling the truth. Neither is lying. The brief simply never connected what the agency was doing to what the business actually needed.</p>

<p>The fix is not to change agency. It is to write a proper brief - one that starts with the commercial outcome, defines what success looks like in revenue terms, and specifies the metrics that will determine whether the relationship is working. An agency given a commercial brief will perform differently from an agency given a feature list. The best delivery agencies want a clear commercial brief precisely because it gives them something meaningful to work towards.</p>

<h2>The governance problem</h2>

<p>A well-written brief is the starting point. Governance is what makes it stick.</p>

<p>Most UK mid-market manufacturers and retailers have no standing governance structure for their agency relationships. The agency submits a monthly report. Someone reads it, or does not. There is a quarterly review meeting that gets cancelled twice before it happens. The MD has concerns but no structured forum to raise them. The agency makes decisions about where to direct its effort based on what seems most useful from their side, because there is no client-side direction telling them otherwise.</p>

<p>In this environment, the agency optimises for the metrics it can control. Organic traffic. Rankings. Number of tickets closed. Development velocity. These are real metrics that reflect real work. They are also almost never the metrics the MD actually cares about, which are revenue contribution, customer acquisition cost, trade portal adoption, conversion rate improvement.</p>

<p>The gap between these two sets of metrics is not the agency's fault. It is a governance failure. The client has not created the structure that connects the agency's activity to the commercial outcomes the business needs. The <a href="/insights/digital-steering-committee-ecommerce-governance">monthly report presents what the agency can measure - the steering committee is where the gap between activity and outcome gets examined and closed</a>.</p>

<p>Without that structure, the relationship drifts. The agency does good work in the wrong direction. The client grows frustrated without being able to articulate precisely why. Both parties end up in a difficult conversation that replaces a governance problem with a new agency and the same underlying conditions.</p>

<h2>The direction problem</h2>

<p>Good agencies are delivery specialists. They build platforms, run campaigns, manage data, optimise journeys. What they are not - and what the best ones will tell you clearly - is the strategic authority for the client's commercial direction.</p>

<p>The brief defines what needs to be achieved. The governance structure holds the agency accountable for achieving it. But someone on the client side needs to direct the work - to translate the commercial strategy into a brief the agency can execute, to evaluate the agency's recommendations against the business's actual requirements, and to make the commercial decisions that determine what the agency works on next.</p>

<p>This is the <a href="/insights/ecommerce-capability-gap-uk-manufacturers">client-side capability gap that most UK mid-market businesses have not addressed</a>. The digital marketing manager who manages the agency relationship often lacks the seniority to make commercial decisions or challenge agency recommendations at the right level. The MD has the authority but not the time or the digital fluency to be in the day-to-day. Nobody is directing the agency with the combination of commercial authority and digital understanding the role requires.</p>

<p>The result is an agency that is working hard but without clear direction - doing the things they were briefed to do months ago while the commercial priorities have shifted and nobody has updated the brief.</p>

<p>This is not a reason to change agency. It is a reason to address the internal capability that sits above the agency relationship. A fractional ecommerce director, a commercial lead with genuine digital literacy, or an independent strategic adviser who can own the agency relationship on the client's behalf - any of these resolves the direction problem. None of them is the agency's responsibility to provide.</p>

<h2>When the agency genuinely is the problem</h2>

<p>There are genuine situations where the agency is the problem. Being honest about them matters.</p>

<p>The agency is the problem when they have been given a clear commercial brief, operated within a functioning governance structure, received proper client-side direction, and still consistently failed to produce the outcomes they committed to. When the work is technically poor. When commitments are repeatedly missed without honest explanation. When the agency's senior people are absent from the relationship and the account is managed entirely by juniors. When the agency recommends unnecessary work to generate additional fees rather than to serve the client's commercial interests.</p>

<p>These things happen. When they do, changing agency is the right decision. But the decision should be made on the basis of evidence gathered within a proper governance structure - not on the basis of a frustration that has been building without a structured forum to surface and address it.</p>

<p>The test is simple: has the client provided a commercial brief, created a governance structure, and given the agency proper direction? If yes, and the agency is still consistently falling short of committed outcomes, then the agency is the problem. If no - if any of those three elements are absent - then the agency conversation is premature.</p>

<h2>Why changing agency often fails</h2>

<p>Understanding why the agency relationship is underperforming matters most at the moment a business is considering a change. Because the most common outcome of changing agency without addressing the underlying conditions is a replication of the same frustrations with a new logo on the invoice.</p>

<p><strong>The new agency inherits the same unclear brief.</strong> They are told what the client wants - more traffic, a rebuilt platform, better conversion - without a commercial outcome that connects the work to revenue. They scope what they can deliver. They commit to metrics they can control. Twelve months later, the MD is looking at the same quarterly report and feeling the same growing concern.</p>

<p><strong>The new agency operates within the same absent governance structure.</strong> There is still no standing steering committee. Progress is still reviewed through monthly reports produced by the agency against metrics the agency selected. The commercial authority is still not in the room on a regular cadence. The gap between agency activity and commercial outcome is still invisible until it becomes a frustration.</p>

<p><strong>The new agency still lacks client-side direction.</strong> The internal team managing the relationship still does not have the seniority or commercial authority to brief and challenge the agency effectively. The strategic decisions that should be shaping the agency's work are still being made informally, if at all.</p>

<p>Changing agency is sometimes the right decision. But it is never sufficient on its own. The governance conditions that made the previous relationship fail will produce the same result in the new one. Getting those conditions right - brief, governance structure, client-side direction - is the work that determines whether any agency relationship succeeds. It is also the work that most UK manufacturers and retailers have never done.</p>

<h2>The right sequence</h2>

<p>The order in which these things need to happen matters.</p>

<p><strong>First: define the commercial outcome</strong> the agency relationship needs to produce. Not a feature list or an activity brief. A commercial outcome with a measurable definition of success.</p>

<p><strong>Second: establish the governance structure.</strong> A <a href="/insights/digital-steering-committee-ecommerce-governance">regular steering committee</a> that reviews progress against that commercial outcome with the right people from both sides present. The agency's senior accountable person, not the account manager. The client's commercial authority, not just the digital manager.</p>

<p><strong>Third: ensure the client-side direction capability exists.</strong> Someone who can translate commercial strategy into agency brief, evaluate recommendations, and make decisions between steering committee meetings.</p>

<p><strong>Fourth: give the relationship time</strong> to operate within that structure before drawing conclusions. Most agency relationships that have been running without governance for twelve months cannot be fairly evaluated in the first ninety days of proper structure. The right signals take time to emerge.</p>

<p>If, after that sequence, the agency is consistently underperforming against clearly defined commercial outcomes, then the conversation about changing agency is happening on the right terms. It is based on evidence, not frustration. The next agency inherits a proper brief, a governance structure and a client organisation that knows how to direct external partners. The problems that produced the frustration with the previous agency do not follow into the new relationship.</p>

<h2>The Right Partners position</h2>

<p>Right Partners works with delivery agencies rather than competing with them. Our model depends on the quality of the agencies we work alongside - trusted specialist partners across ecommerce platform delivery, implementation, paid media, data and CRO - each selected for deep expertise in their specific discipline.</p>

<p>What we provide is the <a href="/insights/what-good-management-consultancy-looks-like">strategic and commercial layer above those delivery relationships</a> - the brief, the governance structure, the client-side direction capability that most UK manufacturers and retailers are missing. Not a replacement for agency expertise. The thing that makes agency expertise work.</p>

<p>When a UK manufacturer comes to us frustrated with their current agency relationship, our first question is always the same: what is the agency accountable for, and how are you measuring it? In the majority of cases, the honest answer reveals a governance problem before it reveals an agency problem. The right intervention is not a new agency. It is a better structure around the current one.</p>

<p>And when the evidence does support changing agency - when the governance is sound, the brief was clear, the direction was provided and the agency still failed to deliver - we run the <a href="/insights/what-good-management-consultancy-looks-like">agency selection process independently</a>, brief the new agency properly, and govern the new relationship from day one so that the problems that produced the frustration do not follow the client into the next relationship.</p>

<h2>Frequently asked questions</h2>

<h3>Why is my ecommerce agency underperforming?</h3>

<p>In most cases, ecommerce agency underperformance traces back to one of three client-side failures: an incomplete brief that did not define commercial outcomes in measurable terms; an absent governance structure that would have connected agency activity to commercial results; or a missing client-side direction capability that left the agency without clear commercial leadership. Before concluding the agency is the problem, it is worth assessing honestly whether all three of those conditions were in place.</p>

<h3>How do I write a good brief for my ecommerce agency?</h3>

<p>A good ecommerce agency brief starts with the commercial outcome - the specific, measurable result the relationship needs to produce - and works backwards to define the scope of work required. It specifies the channels and platforms in scope, the customer segments being served, the metrics that will determine success, the constraints the agency needs to respect, and the reporting framework that will be used to review progress. "We want more sales" is not a brief. "We need to increase B2B trade portal adoption from 15% to 60% of active accounts within twelve months, with order frequency as the primary success metric" is a brief.</p>

<h3>How should I manage my ecommerce agency?</h3>

<p>Through a structured governance model with three components: a clear commercial brief that defines outcomes rather than activities; a <a href="/insights/digital-steering-committee-ecommerce-governance">regular steering committee</a> that reviews progress against those outcomes with the agency's senior accountable person and the client's commercial authority both present; and a client-side direction capability - whether internal or fractional - that translates commercial strategy into agency brief between steering committee meetings.</p>

<h3>When should I change my ecommerce agency?</h3>

<p>When the agency has been given a clear commercial brief, operated within a proper governance structure, received client-side direction, and consistently failed to produce the commercial outcomes they committed to. Not before those conditions have been established. The decision to change agency made without a proper governance structure is almost always premature - the same underlying problems will reproduce themselves in the new relationship. The governance structure is both the fair basis for evaluating the current agency and the foundation that makes the next agency relationship work properly from day one.</p>

<h3>What is the difference between an ecommerce agency and an ecommerce consultant?</h3>

<p>An ecommerce agency delivers execution - building platforms, running campaigns, managing data, optimising journeys. An <a href="/insights/what-good-management-consultancy-looks-like">ecommerce consultant</a> provides the strategic and commercial layer that sits above execution - defining the commercial outcome, writing the brief, establishing the governance structure, directing the agency's work and evaluating its commercial return. The two are complementary rather than competing. Most UK manufacturers and retailers have agency relationships and no consultancy layer. The absence of the consultancy layer is almost always the reason the agency relationship underperforms.</p>

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<p>Right Partners works alongside ecommerce delivery agencies to provide the strategic and governance layer most UK manufacturers and retailers are missing. If your agency relationship is underperforming and you are not sure whether the problem is the agency or the structure around it, <a href="/free-strategy-consultation">book a free 60-minute conversation</a>. We will give you an honest assessment before you make any decisions.</p>

More articles coming soon.